The Texas Department of Public Safety must begin the process of releasing documents related to the deadly Ulvade school shooting last year, a judge in Austin has ruled.
On Thursday, district court Judge Daniella Deseta Lyttle ruled in favour of a group of news companies that argued the department’s refusal to release records related to the shooting at Robb Elementary School last May violated state law.
On 24 May 2022, a gunman entered the Uvalde school and killed 19 fourth-graders and their two teachers while holed up in two conjoining classrooms.
The lawsuit was brought by a media coalition comprised of local, state, and national outlets, seeking information about the botched response of law enforcement officials who waited in the hallway for more than an hour before confronting the shooter, Salvador Ramos.
As per Thursday’s ruling, the DPS must provide recordings and transcripts of 911 calls, body cam footage, dashcam videos from police vehicles, and details of the training public safety department officers received, among other things.
The judge said the department must provide a list of redactions to the court by 31 August. A hearing on their proposal is expected in September.
In a statement to the Texas Tribune, the plaintiffs’ attorney Laura Lee Prather said: “As officials continue to shield nearly all information related to the Uvalde tragedy, on the basis of an investigation that has already concluded and a purported prosecution that has yet to materialise, we are thrilled by the court’s ruling that recognises the public’s right to know what happened that day.”
A Texas House committee slammed law enforcement’s abysmal response to the shooting, when nearly 400 heavily-armed officers waited 77 minutes as Ramos terrorised the children, between the ages of nine and 10, on that tragic day in May.
The House committee was tasked with uncovering what happened during the shooting and, in its damning report published last July, criticised the police officers’s “lackadaisical approach” to neutralising Ramos.
The report said it was “plausible” that some of the children’s lives might have been saved if they had received medical attention sooner.
The media outlets’ lawsuit against DPS was filed last August.
Ms Prather, a First Amendment lawyer, previously said the DPS “offered inconsistent accounts of how law enforcement responded to the Uvalde tragedy, and its lack of transparency has stirred suspicion and frustration in a community that is still struggling with grief and shock”.
She added the department had refused multiple requests for information by news organisations such as CNN, The New York Times, ABC, CBS, and the Texas Tribune “ even though it’s clear under Texas law that the public is entitled to have access to these important public records”.
